By all means worry about environmental problems. Like the various suggestions on this page to crash-land a mining asteroid on Earth---let's not do that.
But at the moment the possibility of changing the mass of the earth has to be really low on the list of environmental worries. When we're moving a billion kilograms an hour, net, to Earth, I will sign your petition and donate to your campaign.
I think you took me the wrong way. I'm not trying to be political/environmental. I'm curious on the broader scheme "sci-fyi-ness" of what the future could look like, and how we would get in such places. And the Sociological causes/effects of such futures.
That, and the theoretical thought of what would happen should we impact the weight of the world to the point of it having a noticeable impact on earths astronomical characteristics intrigues me.
Fair enough, and sorry. Sci-fi version: once you're moving that sort of tonnage, logarithmically speaking you're closer to Ringworlds and Dyson spheres than you are to near-future asteroid mining.
But at the moment the possibility of changing the mass of the earth has to be really low on the list of environmental worries. When we're moving a billion kilograms an hour, net, to Earth, I will sign your petition and donate to your campaign.